PolicyKit unlock button text appears dissociated from key icon

[Allan Caeg]

Binary package hint: gnome-system-tools

On users-admin, there is a key icon, which is supposed to authenticate the administrator. Beside it is text that says "Click to make changes." The text seems out of place. It is hard to determine that the text on the right of the key icon is what describes what it does.

What would be easier to understand would be having the icon and text on the authenticate button. However, GNOME is veering away from that convention. Because of this new trend, it could be better to simply have the "Click to make changes" text on the authenticate button.

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: amd64
Date: Mon Nov 2 21:18:11 2009
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 9.10
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 9.10 "Karmic Koala" - Release amd64 (20091027)
Package: gnome-system-tools 2.28.1-0ubuntu2
ProcEnviron:
 PATH=(custom, user)
 LANG=en_PH.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.31-14.48-generic
SourcePackage: gnome-system-tools
Uname: Linux 2.6.31-14-generic x86_64

[Milan Bouchet-Valat (nalimilan)]

So we should put the icon and text together in a button, and let GTK+ choose to display the icon or not, just like it's done since Karmic for all (standard) buttons. This is much like the old Unlock button, after all.

We'd need a comment from an usability engineer here, because it's not really clear to me whether it would really be clearer.

[Allan Caeg (allancaeg)]

I'm a usability enthusiast and an Ubuntu user at the same time. When I read "click to make changes", I didn't know what it meant. Having text placed like that never seemed to be a convention. Also, even if it was a convention, it's hard to interpret for first time users.

There's "Help," Lock Icon, "Click to make changes," and "Close." All of them are buttons except the "Click to make changes" text. What makes me assume that the text is supposed to be associated to one of those buttons and the one it is associated with is the one on the left? For me, it's the metaphor that the icon represents. It took too much analysis and I'm more savvy than the typical user.

What I suggest now is simply have a button with the text "Make Changes" or something more fit if we can think of one.

[Vish (vish)]

The "Click to make changes" is misleading as the user would usually click on the wording rather than icon next to it! [this is similar to how it was confusing to the user when notifications displayed "Click icon to see more info"]. And this is also poorly worded as, all that the icon does is to unlock the settings.

More ideal would be to combine the icon-button and the non-reactive text into :
- a button with text "Unlock Settings" + the key icon [which is not displayed if user has default settings , button-icons set to false]
- With the button's tooltips saying "Administrator password required to unlock settings"

@mpt: does that sound good?

[Allan Caeg (allancaeg)]

Sounds good to me :)

On Tue, 2009-11-03 at 06:32 +0000, mac_v wrote:
> The "Click to make changes" is misleading as the user would usually
> click on the wording rather than icon next to it! [this is similar to
> how it was confusing to the user when notifications displayed "Click
> icon to see more info"]. And this is also poorly worded as, all that
> the icon does is to unlock the settings.
>
> More ideal would be to combine the icon-button and the non-reactive text into :
> - a button with text "Unlock Settings" + the key icon [which is not displayed if user has default settings , button-icons set to false]
> - With the button's tooltips saying "Administrator password required to unlock settings"
>
> @mpt: does that sound good?
>
> ** Changed in: hundredpapercuts
> Importance: Undecided => Low
>
> ** Changed in: hundredpapercuts
> Status: New => Triaged
>

[Milan Bouchet-Valat (nalimilan)]

As a developer using the PolkitLockButton, I'd also like the text to be shorter so that we don't have the dialog sizing problems we have now, since they are very hard to fix (GtkButtonBox issues). So something like "Unlock" sounds good, but I'm not sure about "settings": you're not unlocking the settings but the dialog/interface. Maybe something like "Allow/Prevent changes" would be clearer.

Anyway I think that David Zeuthen upstream has some ideas about this, it would be worth reporting to GNOME's Bugzilla to discuss that.

[Vish (vish)]

This bug is an upstream one and it would be quite helpful if somebody experiencing it could send the bug the to the people writing the software. You can learn more about how to do this for various upstreams at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs/Upstream. Thanks in advance!

[Allan Caeg (allancaeg)]

Filed upstream https://bugzilla.gnome.org/post_bug.cgi

[Vish (vish)]

@Allan Caeg: the link you'v posted is not the link for/to the bug.

[Allan Caeg (allancaeg)]

Oops. Here it is https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=600543

[Chris Wilson (notgary-deactivatedaccount)]

The version of users-admin shipped with 11.10 no longer has this problem.